My first experience with perfboard was not a good one. After two evenings spent soldering this little thing, it was disappointing when it didn’t work at all, no lights, no smoke–nothing.

Troubleshooting something like this is difficult at best. This probably would have worked out better if I had more space to work with, but this was the maximum size I could use for this project. Since I had a deadline to get something working (temporarily), I didn’t spend much time troubleshooting before moving on to plan B.

Now I’m back to build a more permanent solution. Given the space constraints, I’ve decided to forego perfboard and design a two sided PCB. Next time, I’ll go with a PCB in the first place. The only reason I didn’t in this case was the lack of lead time.

Lesson learned: Save the perfboard for cases where the components won’t be too close together. And, take your time.